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University Presses /Academic Publishers
Please share your experiences working with these presses! Feel free to add other presses and publishers to the list. Please use "Heading 3" to format the names of presses or publishers. Use bullet points to add responses under each heading. See Also: Association of American University Presses (List of Members) University Presses Cambridge University Press *Editor "misplaced" first copy of manuscript. I only discovered this three months in when I sent an inquiry about the current status of the review. I sent a second copy of the ms, as the editor requested. I started checking in every three months, then every six weeks. Every time, I was told the ms was about to be sent out for review. I finally pulled the ms from Cambridge after it had sat there more than a year with absolutely no movement and no external reviews. From what I hear, this sort of inaction is common with Cambridge (I worked through the UK office). **Did the editor ask for an exclusive review of your manuscript? There should be some accountability for such unprofessional conduct. Columbia University Press * Cornell University Press * Duke University Press * Fordham University Press * Harvard University Press * Johns Hopkins University Press * Manchester University Press * Northwestern University Press *I have a ms. under review here and am hugely impressed with the professionalism and promptness of the editors Notre Dame University Press * Ohio State University Press * Oxford University Press * Princeton University Press * Purdue University Press * Rutgers University Press * Stanford University Press * Syracuse University Press *So far my experience has been absolutely horrendous. It took them over 2 years to accept a ms., and the current projected pub date is 2014, over 2 years after submission of the final ms. I would strongly advise against dealing with this press for anyone under time pressure to publish. University of California Press * University of Chicago Press * University of Massachusetts Press * University of Michigan Press * University of Ottawa Press * University of Pennsylvania Press *Terrific to work with, very good to their authors. And Jerry Singerman may be the best scholarly-press editor working in the humanities. *Be careful. After five months of review time the editor (not the same as above) led me to believe the manuscript was moving toward an invitation to respond to positive reports. Got a rude shock a week or so later. Instead of the invite he emailed an apology for being delinquent with the process and declined to invite a response even as he presented a second positive report. I have no idea what transpired between him and the series editors but this experience left me with a poor impression of the press and the two series editors. **Q. ^^^When was this? Which series? University of Texas Press * University of Toronto Press * University of Virginia Press * University of Washington Press * submitted a book manuscript to a series run by the press January 2011. I had been in contact with the series editors previously, and had been encouraged to submit a full ms. Received two positive reader reviews November 2011 with an invitation from the acquisitions editor to submit a plan for revision. I submitted that quickly and moved ahead with the revisions, which were fairly minor. Resubmitted late January 2012. Received email acknowledgement from a different acqusitions editor saying the previous one had retired, and that I would receive a full response soon. Heardnothing for two months. Emailed in April 2012 and three days later received a response telling me that the manuscript was now rejected. No explanation whatsoever. No communication from the series editors, whom I know personally. What happened? * Alarmed and very sorry to know about your disappointing experience with UW Press. How unfortunate that authors have no protection against such callous work ethic. Matters seem to be taken seriously only when a contract is issued but we all know authors spend enough time and resources before the contract. For many their tenure clock ticks away and is catastrophic if they were to have the UW Press experience above. Will keep this post in mind when I look for a press for my next manuscript. Thanks. Regarding the silence--my experience shows that some (not all) editors are initially (very) polite and inviting. After receiving the manuscript and proposal, they change gears and move into an "automated reply" mode or the "ignore and keep mum" mode. Initially this was annoying now it is predictible, and makes me laugh and strategize accordingly. University Press of Florida * University Press of Kansas * Wilfrid Laurier University Press *Had conversation with editor at a conference; submitted proposal. The next year, at the same conference, saw editor again, and they assured me the proposal was in her bag to review on the plane. Two years later, the book is coming out with another press--and I still haven't gotten a reply to either my submission email or the note I sent pulling the book from consideration! *I would love to send a copy of your book to the Wilfred Laurier Press editor and say it dropped from her bag. Although I am one-book old in the book publishing game, my experience so far: (a) when editors embrace the book proposal with enthusiasm, don't take them too seriously. Chances are once you submit your manuscript and/or sample chapters they are either "out of office" or suffer amnesia; (b) several editors do not disclose details of the review process--ask them and they demure or curtly retort along the lines that it is none of the author's business; © no matter when you submit your manuscript, for editors there never is a good time to submit a manuscript for peer review: Jan and August submissions are definitely bad timing because faculty are busy with the start of the new semester. June-July is also not helpful because faculty are pursuing their own research plans. This leaves the rest of the year: faculty teach large classes and have complicated schedules. (d) Well, now lets say the review returned two positive responses. Hold your horses, those reviews don't mean a thing. The editor might casually inform you there have been some unexpected developments and decline the manuscript or she/he might blame the marketing department for not being enthusiastic. Most might wonder why the marketing folks were not consulted before the long drawn review began. At this point of rejection and dejection don't hold hopes of a meaningful dialogue. The editor's decision is final and they are not courting you any more. It is in your best interest to rein-in your lost time and hopes, and seek another publisher. A well-published academic once advised me, "keep your cards close to your chest" i.e., have an interested publisher firmly in place before any rejection. Yale University Press * Other Academic Publishers Ashgate Publishing * Berg Publishers * Brill * Cambridge Scholars *Is this publisher legitimate or a glorified vanity press? I've heard mixed things. *They're legitimate in that they don't charge for their services (the definition of a vanity press); they don't even have a subvention fee, which is more than can be said for several other academic presses. They also don't consistently peer-review, however; it seems the editorial team has maybe a bit too much faith in their own judgement, and only makes recourse to reviewers reports when they have some doubt about a manuscript. On the upside, they have a quick publication turnaround, and are much more pleasant to work with than Peter Lang (who always seem to want to hit the author with huge typesetting fees at the last moment). *The first question is really two questions, First, does a book from Cambridge Scholars count toward promotion at your current job? (You can find out the answer by asking.) Second, would a book from Cambridge Scholars help you get some other job that you want down the road? (You can get a sense of this by looking at departments where you'd like to be and seeing where people there have published their books.) Legenda Press * Palgrave Macmillan *quick rejection for a translation on the grounds that "they do not publish novels" (2011); this was a work of scholarship, so the grounds for rejection seemed rather odd. *Sent in proposal for edited anthology. Received reader's report quickly, which was generally favourable, but suggested re-write. Proposal was accepted very quickly after re-write, even though we only had abstracts, no finished chapters. Editors have been very friendly and helpful. *Publication process moved quickly, with the MS sent to one reader report who recommended some changes. In all, it was 8 months between sending in a proposal and signing a contract, then 8 months from submitting a final manuscript to having the book in print. The copyediting and production was a bit haphazard, though; an author needs to have a good eye for detail since I've seen other Palgrave books with mistakes in them. There's also Palgrave's tendency to publish scholarly books only in expensive hardcover editions. Even a well-received book may not get re-issued in paperback. I decided to take my second book to a university press, which gave me a much more favorable contract and had better attention to detail in the production process. Palgrave's only advantage was in speed (which for an Assistant Professor can be the most important factor). Peter Lang *Make sure that your department and university count a Peter Lang book toward tenure before you decide to publish with them. Some places do not. * Routledge *Awesome experience with Routledge. Within two months of sending the ms, I had a half dozen reader's reports and a contract. Book sped through the process and into print in less than a year from my initial proposal. *Ditto. I have a ms under contract and the editor was prompt, enthusiastic, quick in producing four external reviews of the proposal and thoroughly professional. I have also sent a query for another book manuscript to Routledge and that editor too has been prompt and professional. I am told their production time is eight months. Wiley-Blackwell *